The Omicron variant

People in general just follow the news headlines and maybe a few paragraphs of information provided to them by a seemingly trusted board of experts. There are usually not many bad actors but just a perpetuum mobile in a loop in which a consensus seems to appear because everybody thinks everybody else thinks the same. Little by little dissonant voices no matter how qualified will be elbowed out and the outcome will be seen as the only logical one within the parameters the people in the inner circle create that is open to debate. Anyone outside is basically a bad actor, a fringe player, an ignoramus and should be punished. Ordinary people will support it because now you have a working dichotomy with people on the right and the wrong side. Omicron has made this actually much worse but it is the culmination of a few years of fear and trepidation. I am quite repulsed by what some of my friends and relatives have dared to utter, mainly about those who have refused the current vaccines. It has been a sliding scale and you dont need a master in psychology to understand the path and mission creep which has lead to an extention of control measures, more rules and regulations over the last years and into the future, with the backup of more and more citizens complying w any new rule the new moral army has in store.

Freedom has become a word that is now frowned upon in the West and you must be some right wing nutcase to mention it, or an anti vaxxer, or Trump supporter or all three. My liberal friends havent a clue about this.

I wonder if, when Omicron come and gone, we will get any freedom back without the fear of implementation of policies like the ones during Covid? I heared PM Mark Rutte fr the Netherlands declare: "even if we had enough resources, hospital beds, staff and ICUs i would still go for a lockdown". Is this what we have become?

total (worldwide) 103,555

https://newsnodes.com/omicron_tracker

^^^ prevalence data is a few days out of date.

Pop into a pharmacy and tell them you want your booster and they would be none the wiser.

Got the booster today after the initial two jabs in the Summer, just like the majority of us… but if the plan is a vaccine every few months to match the variants of the Greek alphabet, you can fooking count me out! No Anti Vaxxer here but we’ll all become ‘Vaxaholics’ with even a sign of a sniffle in the long run. Enough is enough!

Anecdotal,

2 of my children have severe asthma, both have been hospitalised with bronchiolitis, bronchitis and RSV, from as young as 6 weeks old.

Both have suspected Omicron

Both have 0 symptoms.

They have been hinting at it for months, ever since they did the first booster. That's been their answer to the pandemic, more vaccines when it starts to look bad. Whatever about it the restrictions the rest of us have it does seem to be an extreme reaction to Omicron.

My wife and son have been unwell in the past week, high temperatures, dry cough, lethargic and sore throat. Both had antigen and PCR tests which came back negative. My niece with similar symptoms tested positive with antigen and PCR test at the weekend, her siblings with same symptoms tested negative, they're going for another PCR test today. Is there something with Omicron and the timing of when you get the PCR tests that affects the results? Like if you go too early or late in your lifecycle of having the virus it doesn't show up positive? I'm hearing similar stories from friends and family, basically all the symptoms but getting negative antigen and PCR tests

Political BS. Highly exaggerated. You live in a truly free democratic country. Your freedom is not endangered in any way whatsoever.

You should go and live in Belarus to understand what bollox you're talking and what real loss of freedom looks like.

Also, I take deep issue with these exaggerated notions of "freedom loss" such as yours because I lived in an actual not free country when I was a child and I know what it means. My mother was questioned by the police and taken to the police station simply for not standing still while the Soviet anthem was being played at a public place but instead was carrying on with her commute to work. You've no idea what freedom or loss of freedom means.

Introducing few temporary rules for managing a pathogen endangering public health is not a loss of freedom.

I think Moderna/Pfizer and Novavax etc should quickly update the vaccine at this stage. Pointless using WuHan variant as the base.

Either base it on Delta or Omicron or maybe some sort of a mixture of spike proteins from Mu, Lambda, Delta and Omicron or whatever. I believe that's not exactly easy to do with mRNA because the mRNA can code only one protein and I'm not sure if the vaccine can contain two/multiple different mRNA versions or whether this was tested etc.

His point has just been proved...

I know I'm a stranger on the Internet who could say anything but this is my experience.

There is a certain cohort of people who would rather they were drowning in lung fluid just to say I told you so.